Month: April 2005

It’s that hot
time of the year again. Where the weather becomes really warm and humid. I’m
usually comfortable with warmth but this is absurd. Even at night, there’s
little wind and the air is exceptionally warmer than usual. Each morning I wake
up in sweat even though my electric fan is running at speed 2 (I usually run it
at 1, fastest 3).

Besides the weather, there are more infuriating things happening on the net.
The zombie PCs continue to join IRC channels with random nicknames and IPs and
spam the channel. There’s no possible way to ban them all since their IP range
is too wide. I hope the server operators are doing something.

These IRC zombies are the least of my worries. Recently, the Final Fantasy XI
servers are being DDoS-ed (Distributed Denial of Service) repeatedly, giving
every single player out there inconvenience. There are theories that this has
something to do with the recent conflict between China and Japan over history
books.

Others say it’s the revenge of perhaps one or many of the 800 players that
got banned by Square-Enix from FFXI last Valentine’s Day. S-E’s Valentine’s
gift to it’s remaining players. Why I say it’s a gift is because I noticed the
usual China gilfarmers on my server went missing. But! There are reports of new
batches of gilfarmers returning and the proof given is quite
substantial.

Anyway whoever staged this DDoS needs to have his ass poked by a
thousand Sabotenders.

Alright, I finally took the time to get Thief (THF) to level 37. It’s
quite easy playing thief actually. Well, as long as my macros don’t get stuck.
[X|]

There are quite a lot of occasions where Trick Attack did not activate
causing me to hold hate.

The Sneak Attack and Trick Attack abilities of the THF are very useful in
hate control. They can deal impressive amounts of damage and then place all
the hate on another player (preferably the tank).

Sneak Attack makes your next hit a critical one with added bonus damage based
on your DEX. But this only works when you attack the enemy’s behind.

Trick Attack puts all the hate you generate from your next attack/weaponskill
onto the player between you and the monster.

Activate them both at the same and fire off your weaponskill (Viper Bite
is a good one) onto back of the monster with another player in between, you deal
300-500 damage and successfully tricked the monster into thinking that poor
player was the one who did all that damage.

In my last EXP PT as a THF, my little Tarutaru White Mage (WHM) decided
to meelee all of a sudden and so by accident, we Sneak Attack/Trick
Attack (SATA) on him thrice. There were 2 THFs in our party. The first time
he died, but for the next 2 accidents, he survived because the tank managed to
pull back hate.

So I now have 2 suitable jobs which are at least level
37 to sub for DRK till 75. I have 2 Sniper Rings and adequate Accuracy to
be able to use Great Sword in an EXP PT, I discovered Bream Sushi is a lot
cheaper and gives +16% Accuracy Bonus over Sole Sushi and that extra 1% gives a
noticeable improvement. Just that Sole Sushi gives Strength bonus which would
help in STR-based weaponskills like Guillotine and Sickle Moon.

Last Friday as I did my usual shopping at Orchard’s Kinokuniya, I found some
FFXI related books. One’s a concept art book and the other’s like a strategy
guide encyclopedia[amazon.co.jp]. Without hesitation, I grabbed them.
The maps on the encyclopedia are very well detailed. The maze-like Yuhtunga and
Yhoator Jungle won’t be a problem now. There’s also a long list of food and
their various effects.

Though I agree all this information is readily and easily accessible on the
internet, this book is published by Square-Enix so I trust that all information
there are accurate. Of course, I do note the unsatisfied customer
reviews regarding some mistakes at the Amazon link I posted above.

All right! Because there’s going to be a new colleague in the office, my boss ordered 2 computers. A laptop and a desktop. Desktop comes with a 17 inch LCD which I am allowed to switch with my current 15 inch LCD. Finally more viewing space for coding at work!

The new computer will be placed upstairs in the conference room for training purposes. But I’m thinking of making it run the maximizer database server instead of having the older, slower PC do the job. This may involve a lot of extra work transferring MS SQL databases for I don’t have much experience yet.

By the way, I just discovered the slider in display control panel is already at max(1024×768). I’m very afraid I may not be able to get it up to 1280*1024. [X(]

Perhaps I’m weak at dealing with problems and stress of my real life. Thus, I
greatly enjoy sci-fi and fantasy films. Well made ones of course! Movies like
Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek. Unlike Aliens VS Predator, which I firmly believe is
one of the worst made films of the year.

劇場版 Air. I suppose the film was already
shown in Japan so I hope the fansub groups would release it soon. Just a few
days ago I finished watching the whole TV series. Had a “bittersweet” ending.
I’m serving Triad’s copies of the TV series in IRC. But you would be able to get it faster if you have a bittorrent client
installed. Those with routers might need to configure port forwarding.

Howl’s Moving Castle. This anime
film was recently shown in Singapore but I chose not to watch it in the local
cinemas for fear of watching it with children. Children who make lots of noises
and keep talking during the show. I understand that some people can’t resist and
want to discuss about a particular scene during the show. I would love to
discuss it only after it ends because while watching, I get absorbed and would
prefer to be left undisturbed while the film distorts my reality. Also waiting
for fansub groups.

Other than films I’m also looking forward to advancing the storyline in Final
Fantasy XI. I’m at the phase where this “game” no longer feels like any other
casual game. Because it’s players are all able to interact and communicate with
one another and there are players from many parts of the world, it feels like
having a second virtual life in a fantasy world where one does not have to
bother with filing his income taxes or worry about putting food on the table.
It’s a world where I weild a scythe and go around killing, adventuring and
meeting other people.

Oh yea, and I have yet to buy a new computer. Hope I could save enough by the
end of this month or the next. More problems are surfacing on my server machine
that’s running this blog. Seems like the harddisk begins to exhibit problems
when left running for more than 4-5 days and needs a bit of rebooting.